A promising hobby that makes team’s life easier

“How do you spend your free time?” If you ask this question to Ruptela people, you will hear some extraordinary answers. Besides sports, motorcycles, or drums, technical research, personal car upgrade, or programming will also be mentioned. Our RnD automotive engineer Paulius has such hobby. He had developed a tool that made his team’s work life’s easier. Are you interested in hearing more?

Paulius, tell us about your developed tool?

I call it “Data Analytics.” Now we use it to find and verify individual parameters by analyzing car data quickly. It was designed to facilitate the day-to-day work of analyzing vehicle data and improving the quality of parameter recognition. This tool processes CAN-BUS data records and finds the positions of the triggered parameters. There is a possibility to view the data graphically. It is simple but useful work automation.

How have “Data Analytics” changed your team’s daily work?

It is a time saver. Some parameters of EV cars can be challenging to determine, such as the ignition or charging status. Because of that, we analyze car data in the office. This program allows studying all possible data cases automatically. The engineer who is sitting in the car can see the results of the final validation right away. There is no need to wait until he returns to the office. Also, it helps to reduce false cases by comparing data with additional given record file.

How did this idea come to your mind?

We had a discussion with a team about challenges we faced. And one of them was vehicle parameters integration because it takes a lot of time. At that time, I had C# language programming courses. So, I decided to develop “Data Analytics” as my final work. All circumstances were favorable.

Was it difficult to implement it?

I found it a little bit challenging. Some car’s specific data has variable structure and it wasn’t easy to process it. I had to be very patient and pay a lot of attention to avoid mistakes. But the knowledge gained in courses and my senior colleagues’ shared experience was a big help and pushed me to move forward. It took a weekend and few evenings to prepare the program.

Do you often engage in such activities in your free time? What is your next project?

The ideas come to my mind very often. Now I started working on the integration of USB-CAN converters in my “Data Analytics” project. This integration will pave the way for new features. But don’t think I am interested only in work-related projects. I have some ideas for myself too. One of them is to integrate new features into my car. I thought it would be useful to see additional parameters like how much fuel is used in the trip, diagnostic trouble codes. Microcontroller programming will be required for this project, so it’s time to blow the dust off my study-time equipment and apply the newly learned knowledge.